I got home just a little while ago and the next few days and the weekend � with a brief pause for Teachers� Cocktails � are going to be fairly hellish, so this bulletin will be the extent of it for close to a week, I�m guessing. Since Tuesday I�ve been doing the class thing and the Homeland Security thing at the same time, trying not to think about the applications thing. I ride the 7 bus back and forth, back and forth. There�s some weirdness going on with my manager � you may remember that he called me in late last week, informed me officially that someone else had been hired into my position, and asked me approximately when I expected to work my last day. I guessed that I could finish up by early next week, my manager and I set up a "transition planning" meeting for Tuesday to hash out the details, and that is when I went back to my desk, got my coat, and took the 7 bus ride that set it all in motion, returning with a tentative schedule and my ticket to math. But on Monday I figured out that I didn�t want to be serving two masters any longer than I had to, so I started working like crazy, checking e-mail and reading newspapers almost not at all, churning out spreadsheets like a motherfucker. The Tuesday meeting rolled around and I said that I�d like to make things quick because I needed to get back to campus and try to get into a class, but, I said, here is what I�m thinking, instead of having my last day in a week or so I�d like to do it on Friday, which considering how much I�m getting done this week � I said � seems entirely reasonable.

So then he said that they�d been hoping to keep me on part time through the end of the month, an offer that didn�t come up at the meeting last week. He said that some deadlines had sneaked up earlier than he�d thought they were going to, and that there was a big chunk of writing that needed to get done, and didn�t I want to do it? He said that everyone had liked having me there. I said I didn�t know if that was going to work, since I was taking a full courseload of mostly technical material and I was going to be pretty swamped almost immediately, also that I�d been getting myself psyched up to be a student again and I just wanted to do it. Then � John : You�re taking a full load? Why would you do that? Me: I�d rather keep busy. In college the more classes I took the better grades I got. Besides, I�m not going to be working, so I�ll have lots of time. John (weirdly hostile): Well, it�s only a community college. My daughter [a high-school senior] took some classes at one last summer, and she was really bored. [So, great, unless I puss out and dissemble, with the next thing I say I either get to put down John�s daughter or cast myself as her intellectual inferior,] Me: I don�t know that I�ll be bored. I haven�t taken math since high school, I�ll have some programming classes, I�ll have German and maybe French, and languages are good because you can put in as much time as you like and it�s never a waste � John (in a tone suggesting that he believes the opposite): Obviously you know better than I do.

It got quite tense and then I was glad to be able to skip off to class (which I got, though no thanks to the skirt; at least two and possibly all of my instructors are gay). But the more I thought about this the more peeved I got. John fired me, right, and hired someone to replace me and because he is a manager has to make all the right noises about her qualifications and experience; however, if they are what he says they are, then he should have no issue about handing over the writing component to her. And what is this about him getting huffy because after he FIRED ME I went and figured out the next thing I was going to do and set to doing it? Isn�t that kind of like cutting me off at the knees and then calling me ungrateful for declining the gift of some lacy anklets? Or is it perhaps more like cutting me off at the knees and then calling me a defeatist for buying a wheelchair? And what may I take to be his implication, that I should blow off an entire quarter of school for the sake of 40-some hours in the service of the organization that FIRED ME?

I don�t know, seeing how much I�ve written about it I fear that I have given the wrong impression, that it was some kind of defining moment rather than just a distasteful and resolve-steeling exchange. Blah. That�s what I get for my inattention to this page. Oh well, something is better than nothing. Right? If not, sorry. I�m distracted on all fronts, will be better � and better � very soon.

Textbooks are expensive. Hipster girls are wearing yellow. Math, as I may have mentioned, is hard. Steve�s home now and I feel antisocial typing, so I�m going to knock off.